Ted Nugent, the sometime classic rocker and current NRA board member, is speaking out about the new generation of gun reform advocates: the “pathetic” teenage “liars” who survived the deadly massacre last month at a high school in Parkland, Florida.

“These poor children, I’m afraid to say this and it hurts me to say this, but the evidence is irrefutable, they have no soul,” he said Friday on Newsmax’s “The Joe Pags Show.”

“The dumbing down of America is manifested in the culture deprivation of our academia that have taught these kids the lies, media that have prodded and encouraged and provided these kids lies,” he said after watching clips of Parkland mass-shooting survivors such as David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez who have become leading advocates of legislation to curb gun violence in the U.S.

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“I really feel sorry for them because it’s not only ignorant and dangerously stupid, but it’s soulless,” he said, in a clip first circulated by Media Matters. “To attack the good law-abiding families of America when well known predictable murderers commit these horrors is deep in the category of soulless.”

Nugent also defended the NRA as “a bunch of American families who have a voice to stand up for our God-given constitutionally-guaranteed right to keep and bear arms. We have no blood on our hands.”

“No NRA member have ever been involved in any mass shootings at all,” he added.

“All you have to do now is feel sorry for the liars. You have to go against them and pray that the lies can be crushed and the liars can be silenced so that real measures can be put into place to actually save children’s lives,” Nugent said.

Needless to say, online reaction to Nugent’s comments came swiftly.

Ted Nugent obviously gets a kick out of being controversial by making idiotic statements. His latest rant about the Parkland student activists having no soul adds to the list.Our kids are dying, and this idiot attacks them. Hey Ted, the only souless person happens to be you.

.@TedNugent's lack of self-awareness is a marvel to behold; to be that devoid of decency, compassion, & goodness—and still mount such a high horse. Ted, you keep trolling teenage shooting survivors—and let the rest of us figure out who possesses a soul.https://t.co/sdMicF8ij1